The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories (Oxford Books of Prose & Verse)

This book was good and interesting I still read it off and on and I barely like to read.

I typically don’t think of ghost stories as being particularly scary but this selection has some real winners. Recommended!

_The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories_ includes a few old favorites but--more importantly, I believe--also includes quite a few tales that are less frequently anthologized. If, like me, you love a good book of ghost stories but seem to find the same dozen or so stories in every anthology on the market, you will be pleasantly surprised by the breadth of stories that Cox has chosen to include.Cox's introduction lends a scholarly air to the volume and prefaces the collection well. However, a brief commentary (say, a paragraph or two) at the beginning or end of each story would have been nice. Also, the paperback cover is not the sturdiest, but light enough to carry (and, I'll admit, to read in the bathtub, a difficult task with a larger, heavier hardback volume of this size).All in all, an excellent collection! I highly recommend it.

Received promptly and in good condition. And the stories included are masterpieces. Love ghost stories set in "jolly old" and, while I'd read many of these, there were a few new to me. All great fun!

I liked this collection, but I have been reading and collecting Victorian ghost stories for so long, most of these were repeats for me. But they're still charming, even after the 5th or 6th read, and I enjoyed them all.

I rarely read fiction, but I do like a good ghost story. This is a great collection of spine-tinglers. Some of them are OK, but many are really frightening. Everyone who likes spooky tales should read this book. They really put a nice selection into this.

The book is great and in good condition, but it didn't come with the dust jacket. Disappointed because it said it had one. The original cover art is really beautiful and will be missed.

glad to find one of the books edited by Cox.

The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories contains a collection of 42 short ghost stories, written between the years 1829 to 1981, and arranged in chronological order.I know nothing about the history of this genre, and I bought the book simply seeking to read a good yarn.I found that I didn't enjoy the style of most of the older stories (1829 to early 20th century) that I attempted to read. This was partly because I found the older style of language irritating in some stories, but also because I found many (not all) of the older stories to be second-rate literature. Some of them seem amateurish and badly written, especially judging by modern standards and expectations. But, more importantly, I simply found many of them dull. I didn't persevere with reading a significant proportion of these older stories.Maybe if I had known what to look for, then i could have picked out the best older stores (i.e. some of the classic stories mentioned by other reviewers) and I would have really enjoyed them. But I hadn't read any reviews when I first read the book, and reading the stories chronologically felt like an endurance test.So, I skipped forwards a few decades in the book, to stories written in the mid-twentieth century onwards, and here the stories became very readable, fun, enjoyable and atmospheric. Some are surprisingly dark and even gloriously twisted! There are some lovely top-rate stories!Overall, I found enough enjoyable stories to read in this book to make it good value at the very cheap price I paid for it (£2.76), but if I was buying again, I would get a book of 20th century ghost stories.I've given the book 4 stars because I skipped so many stories, but there are a significant proportion of excellent stories. I'd give one-star to the first half of the book and five-stars to the last third. This rating isn't based on the literary merit for an anthology, but simply on my own personal enjoyment of the stories.In the end, it's purely a matter of taste, and other reviewers have clearly enjoyed reading the older stories. But I do wonder if some of the reviewers simply skipped to the stories that they were familiar with, and didn't attempt to read the book chronically, in full, as I did.

A real treat ! A great selection of classic stories by most of the top writers of ghostly tales ! Still "The Monkeys Paw" has to be the finest (short) supernatural tale ever composed ! When is Mark Gatiss & associates going to film it for Xmas ? Can I be the 'Monkey' ?! 😉

I will most definitely order from this seller again. I was not disappointed. Arrived pretty quick. Condition of book, though second hand was in great condition and the price was unbelievable

They knew how to write a good ghost story back then and prove that it's about the writing and the suspense without needing to resort to sensationalistic horror; great stories and this is a great collection of the best.

Some of the stories were repeats. There seems to be, in this genre, a tendency to reprint the most-popular [sometimes, the same errors!] stories, and then go looking for less-well-know ones to ring the changes.